Hosting365/Register365 mail delay strangeness

Tenshot

I'm a longtime Hosting365 customer - I have a bunch of web and email domains with them. I'm on one of their older hosting packages (dating to before they morphed into Register365.com), and all my mail domains resolve to mail.hosting365.ie (82.195.128.132).

For the past month or so, something odd has been happening -- mail I fetch from any of my accounts using POP3 is coming in delayed by several minutes; typically between 5-15 minutes. I.e., if I send a mail to myself, even using the same mail server's SMTP service, it will take 5-15 mins to show up in my POP3 inbox.

This is a huge pain, since I primarily use POP3 to download mail to Outlook.

The weird bit is that the mail shows up almost instantly when using IMAP. For example, my iPhone sees the incoming mail immediately, as does the Register365 Webmail interface (using either SQWebMail or IMP).

I've been onto Register365 support a few times about this over the last few weeks and they've been pretty unhelpful, essentially saying that it may be a server load issue and recommending I migrate to one of their cloud services. No real effort to investigate route cause of the problem.

This problem suddenly appeared out of the blue; it's not something that's been gradually getting worse and worse over a period of months; thus, I expect there was some sort of internal change that precipated it.

Anyone else seeing the same thing?

Mr. G

I remember the same problem with a blackberry on pop with blacknight. I moved blackberry provider and it fixed. Maybe its a setting in outlook causing the problem.

Try setting up an account with imap on outlook.

If the server is overloaded that could be the problem.

Tenshot

Mr_Grumpy wrote: »

I remember the same problem with a blackberry on pop with blacknight. I moved blackberry provider and it fixed. Maybe its a setting in outlook causing the problem.

Try setting up an account with imap on outlook.

If the server is overloaded that could be the problem.

Definitely not an Outlook issue -- I see exactly the same behaviour when I telnet directly into the POP3 server and list messages.

It could be a load issue on the server but hard to imagine what would have suddenly caused such a substantial jump, especially when all new customers for the past year have been pointed to a different server so it's only legacy customers still using it.

I'd forgotten Outlook can do IMAP though - I'll give that a try; thanks!

Tenshot

For the benefit of anyone else who comes across this behaviour:

I did some more testing and created a brand new mail account. I sent a single test message to it, and used a script to poll the POP3 server to determine exactly how long it took my test message to be delivered -- almost exactly 13 minutes. Meanwhile, I confirmed via IMAP that the same message was delivered within 5 seconds.

I raised this again with Register365 support, re-iterating that this behaviour seemed very unusual, given that both IMAP and POP3 are accessing the same underlying mailbox (certainly, messages deleted via one service immediately vanish from the other). This time, I received a more detailed reply, as follows:

From Register365 support
Firstly, let me confirm that we are aware of a technical issue on the legacy mail servers that is causing a twelve minute delay for receipt of emails. I can also confirm that this only affects POP3 and not IMAP.

These legacy mail servers are now only worked on when deploying security updates - the vast majority of our engineering maintenance time is entirely focused on the newer cluster of servers. This means that whilst we have confirmed that the issue does exist on the legacy servers, we do not have the engineering time or resources to divert away from the new clusters.

Due to this, we are really trying to encourage customers to move away from these older servers to the new cluster which is more rigorously maintained and more technically resilient. Our eventual plan is to decommission the legacy servers once all users have moved away from them but we accept that that is still some time off.

You have effectively summarised your two options - essentially, you will either need to convert your mail accounts (to IMAP) instead or switch to the new mail services. Both of these options will require your mail users to alter the settings in their mail clients so could cause some small degree of inconvenience.

So, at least an honest reply. I followed up to check a few things on the migration process - I have a bunch of domains, databases, and 50+ email addresses associated with my various sites so I was hoping for some degree of automation:

From Register365 support
You will not have SSH access to the new cluster I'm afraid - access will be by FTP only.

The database servers will be different as well so, yes, a database migration would be involved.

Migration support provided from us is limited and it is intended as a DIY process, assisted with the aid of our guide, which you'll find below. [ ... ]

SSH access is a deal-breaker for me though, since I use it for remote site maintenance extensively. If I have to go through the huge headache of migrating all my domains, email accounts, etc., then I may as well expand my options.

I guess the search for a new hosting provider starts now. PMs with recommendations for a decent Irish Linux hosting company that supports SSH access gratefully received.

Mr. G

Pm sent.

1013

Hi

I have been experiencing the same problem with the delay on POP3, and like you it wasn't gradual. It's pretty frustrating.

Prior to the problem, I enquired about changing to IMAP, but I was told "Under most email software the change will force deletion/recreation of the account as the software will not allow how swapping between types." (sic)

To have to set up each email address again would be a complete PIA.

I was tempted to move also, but the price I'm paying at the moment is very reasonable...

But suggestions and pointers to a reasonably priced company offering numerous emails addresses and alias's would be welcome.

Tenshot

PM sent.

Tenshot

Interesting: as of a few days ago, the POP3 delay issue seems to have been fixed - POP3 mail is now being delivered instantly again.

A pity it took this long; I've almost completed moving my domains to my new hosting provider.

donal.hunt

I'm also a "legacy" customer and am moving away from them on the basis that there is no incentive to migrate to a newer platform (you end up stumping up double the cost while you migrate).

Also, last time I checked there was still no ssh access to the newer platforms (something legacy customers had from day 1 on their accounts).

anyhow - glad the issue got resolved for you.

dahamsta

Buy Irish lads!

zagmund

Am also a hosting365 customer, but only for the last few years. Their support used to be very good, but it seems to have gone downhill in recent times. IMAP never quite worked for them. Every so often (say every 18 months) something bad would happen with their POP service and all my users (the da, the brudder, the wife, the brother in law, etc . . .) would get all 749 of their emails redelivered to them. Not a huge issue, but annoying all the same. Then there's the whole "we're changing your email server but we're not going to tell you and your mail will just stop sending one day" thing they do every year or so.

Just now I have tried to set up IMAP on my brand new work iPhone - I came across a blog post of theirs claiming that IMAP on iPhone was supported for their mail services, but surprise, surprise, when I tried to do it, there were assorted "I don't trust your steenking email server" complaints from the iPhone. I can live with that. IMAP appeared to work, but then when I tried to delete an email it failed. I'm tired of their bits almost working.

I'm up for a new provider - all I want is a pretty straight forward hosting of my domain, about 5 email accounts (via pop and imap), and basic web hosting). I don't want to pay loads of money, but I know that provisioning something like this costs almost nothing. €100 a year or so won't break me.

Cheers,

z

trad

I too am experiencing the same delays. Some emails are not coming through at all. Thought they were "irish" when I bought my latest domain name of them for email but I have to pay for an upgrade to get any sort of decent email service.
Looking at his outfit http://www.irishwebservers.ie/.
If you can believe all they say it's €1.95 a month do Ill be moving there when 365 release me.